A Call for Palestinian Justice

The BDS movement in academia continues to grow.

Nearly a month ago, on Feb. 17, the Stanford University 16th undergraduate senate voted to divest from corporations that were seen as complicit in human rights abuses in Israel and Palestine. This isn’t the first university to pass a resolution that called for a similar divestment. In fact, the University of California, Berkeley, Irvine, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and Northwestern University have all passed resolutions calling for the university to divest in a similar manner. Loyola University Chicago passed a divestment resolution, but the student president, Pedro Guerrero, vetoed it.

But why are student governments and unions calling for universities to divest? The answers lies within the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The BDS movement takes inspiration from the South African anti-Apartheid struggle and is a result from a 2004 call from a group of Palestinian intellectuals and cultural workers who advocated for a Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The following year, the BDS Movement was launched.

In recent times and in the past in Israel, West Bank, and Gaza, there have been human rights violations, illegal settlements, raids and military incursions committed toward the Palestinian people. The BDS movement is a non-violent campaign to counteract what many see as Israeli war crimes and occupation in a manner that is consistent with peaceful activism. Palestinian social justice groups have been formed at various universities across North America for a call to end university support for these atrocities.

Dr. Steven Salaita is an advocate for Palestinian justice and most recently filed a lawsuit against the University of Illinois – Urbana Champlain for the alleged wrongful termination of his teaching position at the university. He’s also been touring North America at various universities and community centres, speaking about academic freedom and his experiences.

On the BDS movement, the Palestinian scholar and author says: “[The BDS movement] faces a significant amount of misinformation.”

The movement has a number of goals that it seeks to accomplish. As the name implies, it’s a three pronged movement which seeks to boycott, divest, or sanction Israeli or non-Israeli corporations, universities or institutions, which are complicit in human rights violations of the Palestinian people. It is not targeted at specific people or academics: rather, it seeks to fight the systematic injustices. It has three major goals which Israel must comply with, by recognizing the right to self-determination of Palestinian people. These include ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantle the West Bank barrier, recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and respect, protect, and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return  to their homes and properties as in accordance with UN resolution 194.

The movement applies to all Palestinian people since its goals s address the interests of Palestinian refugees, citizens of Israel, and those under occupation. However, there are those who are critical of the movement. Some of these include Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Alan Dershowitz, the Reut Institute, Norman Finkelstein, and in September 2014, over 620 academics, most of which were North American and Israeli, signed a petition that was anti-BDS in orientation.

According to Salaita, the success of a movement that is so highly criticized is dependent on how you define success.

“Its ultimate goal is to contribute to a project that liberates Palestine from Israeli occupation, and in that sense it still has much work ahead of it,” he says. “. . . In terms of putting pressure on Israeli institutions and generating a conversation about Israeli occupation in spaces where it was ignored, I would say it has been hugely successful.”

There has also been a large rise in the number of organizations at colleges and universities that advocate for Palestinian rights. One of these groups, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has over 115 chapters at American universities, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League.

With a significant number of chapters at colleges, what stands to question now is whether or not the BDS movement can translate its success into the academic sphere.

“We’ve seen a number of scholarly associations vote and pass resolutions to adhere to academic boycott,” says Salaita. “Some of the negative Israeli policies are being discussed in places where they previously ignored or marginalized. It’s really inspired a lot of people . . . It’s my sense that the academic boycott is successfully changing the terms of the conversation of Israel-Palestine, especially when compared to 10 or 15 years ago.”

However, along with this success are a number of difficulties and critiques that the movement still faces. It’s difficult for the BDS Movement to make a call for a state to sanction Israel because most likely this state has diplomatic relations and is unwilling to jeopardize them. But there has also been institutional opposition from universities, explains Salaita.

A real concern from some academics is that the BDS Movement will seek to silence them, and thus breach academic freedom–which would be a contradiction of sorts. However, that isn’t a concern for Salaita.

“Academic boycott, for instance, focuses solely on Israeli academics and institutions. It doesn’t preclude the individual participation of the citizens of the state of Israel in publishing, in research collaborations, and traveling to attend conferences. Those who organize for various academic boycotts are deeply attuned to the sensitivity of academic freedom. If you look at who these have most affected, it’s not affecting the opponents of the boycott and it’s not affecting Israeli scholars or students,” Salaita explains. “Breaches of academic freedom continue to have an overwhelming effect on Palestinian students and academics.”

As recent trends have indicated, for universities, divestment is on the rise. Many of these institutions have had financial stakes and thus have been called upon by students to stop funding Israeli occupation. This is something that Salaita suggests would be a violation of some element of their mission statement. However, there are those universities who may not have financial gain from this situation.

“In that case, where there is no actual investment, I think that it can serve as an important symbolic art of solidarity,” Salaita says. “It’s extremely troubling, yes . . . a lot of universities have profited from South African Apartheid, in the past, and a lot of them profit from various forms of militarism or political aggression. This is only one example of many in which universities can or have made money . . . in problematic politics.”

There has also been a heated debate amongst many Palestinians and Israelis, and the world in general, regarding the one state or two state solutions. In brief, the former requires one state for Palestinians and Israelis, whereas the former requires two separate states for the two peoples. The two state solutions requires the establishment of 1967 borders. In fact, a 2014 poll found that 53 per cent of Palestinians indicated they would be in favor of a two-state solution, according to the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research. Likewise, 60 per cent of Israelis sampled said they would support a Palestinian state if the prime minister reached an agreement, according to a 2014 survey done by the Dialogue Institute. Ironically enough the same survey finds that 54 per cent of Israelis don’t believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says he wants to promote peace based on a two-state solution.

The one-state or two-state solution has an impact on the BDS movement, as well.

“It’s an extremely important question. I think in the abstract, most people agree the ultimate goal is to end Israeli occupation, but most people see it, quite rightly, as solely one element of a much broader political and activist process . . . the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel [which is] located in Palestine doesn’t  take a specific position,” says Salaita. “U.S. PACBI, which is the organization located in the United States, has followed suit, and doesn’t take a formal position. Sooner or later these questions are going to have be worked out  . . . it’s going to be a favourable moment when it happens.”